Heya. If you read yesterday’s blogiversary victory lap, you know that I read some emails out of order, and thus on Monday we had Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin’s recap of Pénélope Bagieu’s interview, but not the initial framing post about the online festival it was a part of. We’re continuing today with highlights from the festival, and we’ll run a summary post with the overview later rather than try to insert it in the past. I mean, if I’ve got the ability to go back and do things in the past I’m not wasting that on fixing a blog post sequence error, not when there’s Powerball jackpots to win. We at Fleen, as always, than FSFCPL for his ceaseless efforts to bring us the news of bandes dessiné3ss web.

The panel was titled Is Being Known A Prerequisite To Being Published?, and began with introductions: in particular Marie Spénale is known for Heidi In Spring and Wonder Pony, and Cy for Real Sex From Real Life, Radium Girls, etc.

[Festival host]Lise: Do they think being known is a prerequisite to being published?

Spénale: No, she wasn’t know at the time of Heidi so she veers towards no: the prerequisite to her is building a file for the project to present to a publisher, no need for subscribers, as far as she can tell.

Lise: So could being known influence the process?

Spénale: It can be brought up as a strength point, a bonus, so it can be useful, but not a prerequisite.

Cy: It can be a double-edged sword; first, she agrees that it is not a prerequisite, subscribers mean nothing when it comes to sales in the end. And when she submitted the file she built for Radium Girls, her editor when forwarding to the publisher mentioned she made YouTube videos, to which the the latter allegedly reacted Ah, another book from a female YouTuber. In the end he opened the file and the project was made, but it could have started better.

Spénale: She once was introduced in an article as blogger Marie Spénale, which may not necessarily be flattering.

Lise: As for Sita, she started making a name for herself with her YouTube channel, then Instagram account; did that help getting to make webtoons?

Sita: No, it can help, be brought up to strengthen the case, but what’s really important is knowing the field and having the right contacts. The contacts she made when she made YouTube videos in turn led to knowing the editors and publishers to contact.

Lise: All three of them have an Instagram account, does a creator have to have one?

Cy: Have to would be presumptuous; there are no hard rules, each creator can employ different means. She no longer has any portfolio proper, as Instagram has taken up that role for her, more specifically her Instagram feed (as opposed to stories, which she uses for food pictures, etc.)

Sita: She has two accounts, one for drawings and one for book reviews. It takes a lot of time to do right, as well as energy, so it must be accounted for rather than put all your energy to it to the detriment of working on your files, universes, etc. It did earn her commissions, some of them for communication campaigns.

Spénale: She sees her Instagram account more as a display window for readers than as a professional tool.

Lise: And all three also have a YouTube channel, why?

Sita: That originally was for book reviews, everyone had a blog already and she felt it was the right time to get into YouTube; then for her own drawings on top of that. She wanted to create things she appreciated herself, and be able to better reach English-speaking audiences. Oh, and receive book recommendations herself. At the time she did not intend to create books, she had only begun to get back into drawing and was a developer by trade, creation only came later.

Cy: She was getting tired of answering always the same questions, so the intent was being able to send a link for an answer; her first video was on crayons. Then she started publishing speed drawing videos, captured using an iPad in suspension. It can be a versatile medium, with many possible formats, so she published animated GIF, vlogs, explanations for the general public, ad debunking, etc. Community management is a job in itself, so it can take time. She’s having fun, if that weren’t the case she’d stop. There is something of a disdain towards YouTube creators, such as EnjoyPhoenix even though it requires a significant skillset. At some point making a comic book was in fashion with YouTubers, and not all of it was good, as would be the case for any such category in accordance with Sturgeon’s Law, but the negative branding of YouTuber comic book remained.

Sita: Which intersects with the disdain towards comics for children and licensed comics.

Spénale: The main interest for her was experimenting, in particular with longform content which she couldn’t do as well on the blog she already had. Then she worked on her Instagram with short formats, if not instant. She’d like to go back to longform, but it takes time.

Cy: It does take a lot of headspace, and must be done as a batch, instead of answers which can be done as bite-sized work items as questions come.

Spénale: Yes, it does take a lot of time; she did it on the influence of Cy. She did have to invest on it when Wonder Pony, meant for children, was to be released: the publisher hardly promoted it, so she had to take that into her own hands.

Lise: What about Twitch, then?

Cy: She was already a consumer of Twitch livestreams, such as Boulet’s, and opened hers on the prodding of Gauvain Manhattan (who since stopped doing so). She has done a lot of them in the last two years; it allowed her to survive when doing Radium Girls because she’s a hermit, and draws traditionally which means she has to work on her drawing table, so streaming allowed her to exchange with people. It allowed her to have feedback on her work. Now she sometimes feels up to it, sometimes not: it requires some concentration for instance. She does it with her mobile phone using the Twitch app. At the beginning she was uploading with her 4G connection and had to closely watch her credit, now it’s OK.

Sita: Same, she started hitting the ground running, this summer, she wanted to livestream as a fundraiser for BLM/George Floyd, she had no hardware and had to improvise. She appreciated the Twitch community and kept doing so with her phone used as a webcam which wasn’t great, but she kept doing so in the same way so as to survive during the tunnel where she is doing nothing else but draw and starts hating it. And obviously, she never streams client work.

Spénale: Not yet, she has all the necessary hardware, obviously she wouldn’t stream client work either. But wouldn’t spoilers be an issue?

Cy: On the other hand, it would be hard to spoil Radium Girls [Author’s Note: a book telling the story of women who painted clock figures with radium-laced paint so these would be visible in the dark. Without any precaution to speak of]. Anyway, the speech bubbles are done later, and in the end the plates are done over such a long stretch of time that it would be hard to follow that way, not to mention she’s only ever had 80 viewers maximum.

Spénale: So yes, one of these days, though YouTube does consume a lot of her time already.

Lise: So Twitch is more of a community building tool than a portfolio, as Instagram on the other hand appears to be?

Cy: Maybe, but also a very selfish one, it allows a more intimate bubble than Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram allow. There is indeed more of a community feeling, of direct feedback: she feels less on a pedestal to her viewers there. Though of course pests exist there too.

Sita: Artist Twitch is different from the remainder of Twitch, especially in the French-speaking sphere where this is still niche.

Lise: Does it take time away from the job?

Cy: Oh yes.

Spénale: it does take time, but is it time away from her job as a creator? It’s a leisure activity in the end, as if she’d taken up pottery.

Sita: She creates a Webtoon, on a platform which is not really a publisher, so she does a bit of her own outreach, and uses Instagram for that: she schedules posts as a community manager would. And she did a whole campaign when her work came out.

Cy: It is part of the background of her work, and couldn’t tell how much time it takes her. There is no community management to speak of when publishing a comic book in the French-Belgian tradition, and she isn’t paid for that part of the work. She does not fault her publisher for Radium Girls, but for Real Sex From Real Life she invested in her social networks, which amounts to unpaid work. So it’s disheartening when there is no online followup when a comic book comes out.

Spénale: She did start her own channel to make up for the shortcomings of her publisher, so being known was a double-edged sword: her publisher was expecting her to come up with content for promotion on her Instagram, even though that is not her job, fundamentally.

Cy: She got Why don’t you put it on your Instagram? for commission work. And the same goes for some media outlets: when she gets begged to retweet e.g. interviews of her, then who’s promoting whom, exactly?

Spénale: There is the more general issue of not all books being well-supported marketing-wise, because of the general strategy to flood the market, so publishers tend to offload that to the creator if they are known.

Lise: So creators need to do their own communication and community management?

Sita: it’s a role we add to our activities if we are already present on social networks. Some creators are content not doing any of that and more power to them.

Cy: It depends on more than social network activity, even for those already “famous” there: the reader demographics matter a lot. So for books targeting the 12-30 years old range, of course it matters, but readers of history-based comic books are not reachable through social networks. Of course for Real Sex From Real Life the social networks were squarely the target market. Don’t expect an Instagram account to be the key to fame: it’s frustrating and you end up begging for reshares. Nothing happens in a day: she has been on Instagram for 10 years, and found her public there.

Spénale: The matter of the pubic reached is interesting, we do bring a certain public, for instance when signing she sees young women who are less traditionally present on festivals.

Cy: When she signed in a very cool library led by three women, they were impressed: You got women coming to signings!” Cy: Don’t they read comics? Them: Yes, but they don’t come to signings.

Spénale: There is an interest in shifting the balance of power with publishers, it brings new points to the table, she can point to her own community and tell she doesn’t need them as much as she would if she didn’t have it.

Sita: Which is why she wanted to publish on the web first. It’s hard to get published, unless you’re willing to accept pathetic terms, having a public bring some weight when negotiating.

Lise: Does Cy agree?

Cy: She agrees, but it has to be made into a strength, to be brought up on the negotiating table: I bet as much on you as you do on me, and I see our relation as teamwork, rather than the publisher doing her a favor by publishing her. She would like for her promotional work to be properly accounted for by having the publisher pay her for it, but she has been unsuccessful so far.

Spénale: They’re already underpaid when published, with the reasoning being that the publisher brings them fame and the symbolic value of being published, but when any of their YouTube videos accrue many more views, this reasoning from the publishers loses a lot of its value.

At this point Lise fetched questions from the chat log:

• How do they balance these additional efforts with their core creator job?

  Spénale: You have to realize that, and bring it up with the publisher. Given Cy’s reach, she’d better use it as a negotiation point to help her position.

  Cy: To change the relationship you have to stop being passive in front of contracts, so unravel them, even if that’s complicated. She has a good relationship with her editor, but her contractual relationship is with her publisher, with the contracted rights going for 75 years after her death. If all creators start negotiating to add clauses accounting for the value they add when promoting, things are bound to change.

• Are social networks a way to diversify revenues?

  Sita: She doesn’t earn anything from social networks.

  Cy: YouTube money exists, but doesn’t even begin to compare with the time load. Twitch may be more substantial, but only if you become a Twitch partner, and then it becomes closer to mini-patronage. But you can have the occasional benefit.

  Sita: Yes, not so much the social networks proper than people coming with offers.

  Spénale: Social network revenue is insignificant in her experience.

  Cy: However when selling original works the buyers do come from her Instagram audience.

For the record, this is nearly 5000 words from FSFCPL in the space of two posts. I really have to buy him a drink sometime.

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Iced 15th Birthday cake with burning number candles over a pink background with copyspace for your greeting and wishes

Today is 15 December. And while through inattention and writing some posts that were queued up before this page was announced the actual day that this site went live is not known, today is the day that the blogiversary is celebrated. Sort of like how the Queen of England has an official birthday, or all thoroughbred horses are considered to be born on 1 January.

It’s been 15 years, 4293 posts (including this one), 3940 written by me (again, including this one). Lot’s happened in that time. Wrote some good stuff. Wrote some hard stuff. Made some mistakes¹. Made some of the best friends of my life. Rough estimate is that we’ve raised north of US$12,000 for worthy causes in the past four years through the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund. I’m not sure how long this page will continue (nobody’s certain of anything in the depths of a pandemic that has been grievously and intentionally mismanaged), but as long as I’ve got opinions — and, like T-rex, I got opinions — I’ll be here to share them with you.

If you like what we at Fleen have done here, head over to Jon Rosenberg’s store or Patreon and support him, since he’s the one that basically browbeat me into doing it. Sincerely, thanks for that, Jon. I’m a better person because of it.

Happy fifteenth Fleensday. Stay safe, read good comics, we’ll do it all again in Year 16.

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You’re spamming me to say that you want to protect me from spam? Kind of undermining your own message there, Slappy.

_______________
¹ Case in point: Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin sent several posts worth of info regarding the Twitch-hosted BD festival that occurred recently in France, and because I was short on time and read them out of order, I posted yesterday’s Pénélope Bagieu interview without the context that would have been provided by what should have been the first post. We’ll sort that out, promise.

Last week ended badly, post-wise (it ended worse for me and my students), but although I wasn’t able to come up for air in time to see it, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin came through with a recap of a Pénélope Bagieu interview, which is absolutely worth your time. Today, we cede to him the pride of place of the last post of Fleen’s 14th year, as tomorrow is 15 December and the blog’s birthday. More on that tomorrow, let’s get to the news from European shores.

As part of the Twitch-hosted Pleine Page Festival , Bagieu spoke with host LiseF (en Franĉais), which most everybody reading this will not understand, but which you can now get the gist of. Let’s dive in.

After the introductions, the interview began with Bagieu recapping the genesis of her adaptation of The Witches for the benefit of those who missed it from previous coverage.

• On the matter of the reception, she was worried about the British public, where Roald Dahl is sacred, more than about the US public. In the end it went well, not the least because it was well-supported marketing-wise, even though some aspects do not necessarily make that easy to do: for instance, the smoking habit of one of the main characters could have doomed this book to be placed out of the reach of children.
• On the matter of her additions, she sums it up as changed a lot of things while keeping the original spirit. She added what she would have wanted to see at the time: while she had no trouble with the fate of the main character, she wanted to make it less sad if not less hard by him having a friend. So she inserted a girl character to that end, even if she felt such a character was missing at any rate. More generally she tried to make the setting somewhat more contemporaneous.
• On the matter of the 2020 movie adaptation, she finds the trailer absolutely bonkers, which she expects from Robert Zemeckis, and appreciates the atmosphere similar to the children horror of the era of her childhood. She was eager for the private projection she was to receive two days later.
• On the matter of further adaptations, she is not interested, while she appreciated the opportunity she does not want to make it an habit of making comics adaptations. Furthermore, the other books — she mentioned Mathilda in particular — tend have more of an associated imagery, especially since illustrator Quentin Blake was able to provide feedback to Dahl priori to publication, making him sort of a co-author.
• On the matter of her Harvey award (for California Dreamin’) and Eisner award (for Brazen) having ever been a goal for her, she answered not really, or maybe only post-facto. She was already impressed of even having been nominated for her Eisner, and had even hesitated to show up to the ceremony since she didn’t think it was possible for her to win. Now don’t get her wrong, it’s a fantastic feeling and she couldn’t touch the ground the evening after the ceremony, but once that is past her life is not changed in any way. Later on in the interview, she mentioned misplacing the smoking pipe from the Harvey Awards statue.
• On the matter of her work always publishing in France first, she told that when she lived in the US, she tried to make a book intended for the US market on the prodding of her editor, but there are many constraints, many codes: all edges must be filed away for instance, so she was always rethinking her project and it ended up being artificial. The initial spark is fragile to begin with, so if you add self-censorship to that … she got feedback on the order of that is quite French, so she realized she wasn’t that interested: why bother in the first place? Her creation process is selfish, she pleases herself first of all, then in the end considers everyone else. While for a US story, she took the example of a project meant for early teens which was to take place in a school setting, which she visualized as that from Saved By The Bell*, but she was told it wasn’t like that, and this matters: it ended up being a pain in her ass. She reminds us these kinds of projects are long-running, so it must be somewhat enjoyable for her not to burn out.
• On the matter of her goals in life, she answers the main one is to make a living out of comics, and that is hard enough already that wishing for more is not obvious. She is already grateful to be able to make a living out of it, so her goal for now is to keep doing so.
• On the matter of her making drawings at an early age, she answers she did, already with bubbles, first with animated cartoon characters, then her own characters but still involved in sports, influenced by Attacker You. She then did a drawn diary, which carried over to her blog. She did recently locate one of these notebooks, with liberally borrowed plots centered around rhythmic gymnastics.
• On the matter of her participation to Inktober, she mentions hardly participating before, but this year, lacking any active book project, and her various activities being performed on iPad, she jumped on the occasion to draw on paper. Inspired by a Cindy Sherman expo she saw, she tried to feature artists that aren’t already known. Then, she was a jury member for a podcast award which led her to discover Légitime Violence, which ends on Abbé Pierre’s address on inaction in the face of injustice; as a result, she put her works up for sale for the benefit of his foundation. She had a hard time putting a price to them, and after she did she still had doubts, but in the end they sold out so quickly (around a few minutes) that she didn’t realize what happened. So she’s up to doing it again next year.
• On the matter of it being a goal to contribute in this way, she answers it helps coping when working in such a way that aligns with her principles, a bit like taking a stroll when having pins and needles. It’s an outlet for her overflowing revolt. She hates comics being reduced to teaching tools, but she admits it can be useful to deliver a message, more so that a 5000-line pamphlet, as she did for Bloom). It’s a bit of the same process that has led a group of artists to draw portraits of shame of the French representatives who voted to approve the global security bill. If she had some other skills she would use them in a similar fashion: it’s a selfish process which evacuates her overflowing anger. Now she has to consider her audience and not over-solicit them, but also has to consider leveraging them when needed.
• On the matter of her impostor syndrome, if any, she answers having it, of course; it never completely goes away for artists, and merely showing her creations results in a lifetime subscription, so she had to learn to live with it, to cope. How does she do it? It is important for her to remember past experiences. She can’t always shake doubts that her family and friends are sincere when they praise her for being talented, because of course they’d say that, but they are sincere. Every time she shows her work she feels like the student who has to show her exposé to the whole class. The same goes for her fans: of course they’d be nice to me”. Conversely, one hater can be enough to shatter the mood, while on the other hand she glosses over praise.
• On the matter of her promotional activities on TV and radio, she reports being used to it by now: it is a machine so well-oiled with preparation that it’s not her work that is being put to the test. It ends up being always the same questions such that it’s like following a script. The first times, she was terrified of making a blunder; now she ends up being familiar with every show, so she’s in bring ’em on mode, for instance when a show contributor ends up attempting to mansplain life to her. However, she remains afraid of drawing with children: they have no inhibitions. But when it comes to doing the 50th promo show for her book, on the other hand …
• On the matter of advice for handling that, she has a few. The biggest challenge is remaining calm: she mentions rewatching herself and being surprised at how angry she appeared. As a woman she’s not supposed to be angry: even the most violent retort she must deliver as a lady, even in front of a polemicist who is on the other hand allowed to make being angry his whole shtick. She thinks of it as being in the local bar, rather than on TV. She’s not looking to convince her opponent as much as the audience. And she keeps the option of saying I won’t come to be the token feminist and decline the invitation. While she may look preternaturally calm, inside she’s boiling with rage.
• On the matter of unexpected questions, she mentions being taken by surprise by Augustin Trapenard asking her What is brazenness? In such a case, she can’t just drive on autopilot. But when she heard Céline Sciamma in the same situation and struggling as well, it helped reassure her that she wasn’t alone. And she does appreciate complex questions that make her think about it. For instance, she was asked whether the boy at the beginning of The Witches plays with toy cars because that is how his parents died, and she never thought of it that way! That kind of questions can make her rethink herself.
• On the matter of whether she told these stories about women as a way to cure her impostor syndrome, she answers she didn’t see it that way, and it was always a personal project, but it couldn’t help but influence her in the end. Telling such stories of women who take their destiny into their own hands was bound to galvanize her and filled something in her, she absorbed it like a sponge. Furthermore, each one did it in their own way.
• On the matter of whether female reader reactions make her feel she is helping them, she answers the ones who write her already belong to a favorable environment, with many having teacher parents for instance; she already belongs to their environment. She has a lot of appreciation for parents who prod their children into writing her letters, send these, etc. These motivate her to keep going. She keeps them in a box, and answers them on paper.
• On the matter of her role in the Brazen animated series, she answers having had very little. She validated them of course, but when she first met the team she knew the project was in the right hands. Her main contribution was reviewing the scripts and pointing out when they had missed something which she felt important, but otherwise she did not have any reproach. She cried for each episode of the final product, especially when considering it was to air during children’s prime time.

At this point Lise fetched question from the chat log:

• On the matter of sharing her first works, she answers they look like run of the mill children drawings.
• On the matter of advice for beginners, she advises showing your work often first of all, even if it’s the hardest thing in the process, and paradoxically not take too much into account any feedback, which is not necessarily constructive. Indeed, it’s important to show in order to get into the habit early.
• On the matter of her selection process for comics project ideas, she answers she is always having sprouts of a book idea, and she waits and sees which ones stick and keep obsessing her: either she gets bored with the idea eventually, or she keeps following it.
• On the matter of the lockdown hampering her artistically, she confirms being completely blocked on all fronts, and ended up doing nothing but eat. At the beginning she put pressure on herself to use this opportunity, and in the end nothing came out of it, including after the lockdown by inertia of the block. She has zero remorse, as this is a difficult time.
• On the matter of finding her style between Pénélope Jolicoeur and The Witches, she answers you do not so much find your style as having one already and refining it. There is not secret about it, you have to draw a lot, and thank God she did improve on the technical front. It’s important to copy first, it’s OK, and then keep drawing and it will affirm itself.
• On the matter of the indispensable comic book according to her, she points towards her Instagram recommendations, then all of Anne Simon published by Misma, for having a complex universe, incredible characters, and stunning artwork; they can be read in any order. And of course her reviews on MadmoiZelle.
• On the matter of her current book projects, nothing, as discussed. But despite the unfavorable context, she does have an idea that is eating at her, so it will end up having to be done.
• On the matter of a feel-good podcast recommendation, she answers the Distorsion podcast, made by people from Québec, so their accent is surprising at first but she got used to it after one episode.

As always, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for his efforts to share what’s going on in the world of Eurocomics. We’d literally have had no idea about this interview without his hard work translating and summarizing.

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Got a harness, and Martingale collars. And a thing I learned recently: the French word for greyhound is levrette and that position de levrette is the French term for doggy style. Fun fact!

If you want to know why, ask the asshole that wrote a course with a known showstopper flaw in it that affects only instructors and then didn’t tell anybody.

When my boss and I emailed him in a panic, he replied breezily with the fix and a smiley face. I want to punch him in the neck and see if he’s still smiling then.

In case you forgot.

[Updated to add: the image at the top of the post; it was only tweeted by Ryan North a few days ago, and I legit wrote this post a year ago and scheduled it to update today. I have been waiting so long for this, everybody.]

[Updated to additionally add: We hope that Mr North is having a marvelous Bucketmas Day, and encourage him to remember that a bucket is nothing more than a very bounded hole, which we all know are nature’s greatest menaces.]

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Boy, 2020 is the season for long-ago strips to come back. We already saw the return of Dr Kathy Peterson’s Kidnapped By Gnomes, which was on the downswing at the dawn of the last decade. About the time taht KGB was 2.54 centimetering towards hiatus, Bob Scott was launching Molly And The Bear, about which I said:

[I]t occupies a spot midway between Little Dee (in that a kid and an animal interact in an all-ages appropriate manner) and (of all things) the Least I Could Do Beginnings strips on Sundays (which have a very similar, ’60s-era gag cartoon feel to the artwork).

Turns out that since that day eleven and a half years ago (!), Scott has continued with the strip, although it went on several lengthy hiatuses and less-than-regular periods of updating, ironically right around the time of that post. But it’s been publishing at least 5 days a week (sometimes 6, and often 7) since November of 2018 (although much of that was curated reruns; the current run of new strips goes back to August of 2019). There was a strip collection in 2016 under the old title and a new one is a-bornin’ under the strips current title, Bear With Me. From an email from Mr Scott:

My Bear With Me webcomic has a new strip compilation book being published by Hermès Press that will be out January 2021. This is the second book.

The book is currently in pre-order at a US$10 discount off the US$60 price; considering it’s a 250+ page hardcover and Hermès concentrates on archival-quality reprints of classic strips, that somewhat steep price looks justified. If you know somebody that’s got a liking for the classic comic strip laugh-chuckles, take a run through the archives (starting here) and decide if a few zillion strips will keep your loved one busy and indoors until we’ve got a handle on the pandemic.

In other news that’s about as far from the Scott’s strip as it is possible to get and still be in webcomics, I was mightily intrigued by something Matthew Nolan said in the news below today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy. A fair amount of it was about some Numberwang he and Erika Moen have run on their latest Kickstarter, which has led to a pay bump for their guest contributors:

From now on, we’ll be paying folks $140 a page (each comic is 4-5 pages long), and $160 a page for returning artists. As always, all the work done for OJST is creator-owned, so artists keep all the rights to their work. It’s still a long way from a professional Marvel or DC rate, but we’re still pretty proud. For just two nerds running a lil ol sex-ed webcomic, the idea that we can now pay $700-$800 for a comic is amazing.

It might not be Marvel/DC money (or heck, it might be), but considering some of the downright exploitative rates I’ve seen some of the mid- and small-size publishers offer, it’s laudable. But the intriguing part isn’t that Moen & Nolan are awesome people who are doing their damndest to support the community in a rent-and-groceries way; it’s an almost throwaway addendum in two lines:

With that in mind, we are constantly hiring for guest comics.
More of a hubaballoo to come about that in the next few days =)

Creators, I’m going to say that it’s worth your while to keep an eye on Nolan and/or Moen’s social media accounts. When they mention the possibility of a hubaballoo, I start paying attention.

Spam of the day:

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Is this some kind of scam trying to say my house is your house? Because this house comes with a deer problem in the backyard and a greyhound that is a butt sometimes.

There is a post coming on Wednesday that I need you to know that I wrote a solid damn year ago, and have had scheduled to run all that time. It is, even now, looming both on the horizon and in the shadows, waiting to reveal itself. It is an example of my dedication to the important things in life, and I hope you appreciate it.

Speaking of looming …

You know who can loom menacingly with the best of them? Conan. We all know what he’ll say if you ask him what is best in life, but it’s slightly less known that if you ask him what’s second best in life, he’ll tell you that the menacing loom is pretty awesome.

The 240 character limit doesn’t often allow our best modern interpretation of Conan to loom a lot, but you know who writes a properly-looming Conan? Jim Zub. He took over the regular Conan title back in February, got two issues out, and then comic publishing fell over thanks to pandemic and Diamond deciding to not do its job while continuing to charge money at every end of the distro channel.

It’s been a long road to get series started up again; Ryan North’s Power Pack five-parter was supposed to start back in the first half of the year and be done by now, but only got issue #1 out about 10 days ago. Similarly, Karla Pacheco’s run on Spider-Woman¹ was delayed some months, but it running pretty regularly now. In other cases, existing series have been indefinitely delayed.

Presumably, somebody in an office somewhere decides when to resume interrupted series, using whatever priorities they have in mind that are mysterious to the rest of us. For example, the last two issues of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run on Black Panther — like the last two issues of his run, period, as it’s due to wrap with issue #24 — still haven’t released, and over at Dark Horse, Matt Wagner’s latest Grendel series has been stalled at issue #4 with no resumption in sight. But Conan finally resumed in October, meaning that the first four-issue Zub arc is now complete.

Not that reading four issues in February, March, October, and November is ideal, mind you, but if you were looking for an awesome story, started reading said awesome story, and then forgot about the awesome story while the world went over a cliff, one could hardly blame you. But it’s done, so maybe go back and read the start of the story as you get caught up on the back half. Or wait until March when it gets collected in the trade (which will include this first story arc plus the next two issues), but I’m pretty sure Zub would appreciate you reading it now.

Spam of the day:

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You’re a little late there, Champ. You tried. [thumbs-up emoji]

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¹ Which is terrific if you like your superheroes blowing up helicopters and punching mutant dinosaurs in the face.

Our deepest sympathies to Ryan Estrada and his family; this isn’t a singular moment of loss, but rather the start of a long term period of coping and compromise and so very much pain, and none of it had to happen. I know that the howler monkeys who think that they are the only people in the world that matter will be screaming about how this isn’t COVID related; if it happens in your vicinity, you have my permission to punch them in the throat until they can’t spew their stupidity any longer.

You know people like that, too. Maybe they aren’t screaming about conspiracies and RFID and 5G, but they think that it’s overblown, it’s not that bad, that they don’t need to wear a mask and it’ll be okay.

As you know, I’m a volunteer EMT. More, I was recently elected Chief of my agency. I’m responsible for the lives and well-being of the approximately 15000 people in my town (and the quarter million in the surrounding area we serve by mutual aid), but especially the two dozen people I have staffing ambulances.

There’s a few old guys like me, one dude that joined us right out of high school and is still riding despite being four months into his internal medicine residency, and a bunch of relative newbies, people on for less than two years, who have STEPPED THE FUCK UP at a time when they could be doing anything else at less risk to themselves.

A couple of moms and dads, mostly college students. A quarter of them are literal kids — we have a half dozen high school students riding as cadets and we try to keep them off COVID calls, but they’re all presumed COVID calls at this point. It’s not enough that every aspect of their lives has been upended, they’re putting on N95s and going into enclosed spaces with sick people. Anybody that complains about COVID fatigue because they haven’t been able to do exactly as they please for up to a month at a time should try doing CPR for 20 minutes with full PPE on a hot summer’s day¹.

So those people that you know, the ones that think it’s not that big a deal? I need you to do something, fam. I need you to contact them — at a distance –and tell them that this is a crisis point in your relationship. Explain that they are actively trying to kill my two dozen crew members and everybody else in the world. People with COVID, and people without COVID who can’t get the care they need because there’s no room for them, and not enough staff to take care of them.

Tell them they need to

Wear

MASK

or they’re dead to you, because they are trying to harm you and everybody you love with their solipsistic bullshit. Want to be a person that can talk to me, ever? You can’t be such a narcissist that you’re willing to kill others without a care in the world when you could avoid it by doing almost nothing. This is murderously malignant behavior, and none of us are getting out of this pandemic untouched by tragedy. There should be no room in your life for people who are choosing to make it worse.

And when this is all done — and it will be, someday — remember who they were. Because if the greatest public health crisis in a century wasn’t enough to make them do the absolute bare minimum, they’ll do the same to you again, again, and again over matters great and small. I don’t get to choose the patients I serve, so if one of them calls me for help, I’ll provide it. But godsdamn if I don’t wish sometimes I could tell them No, you’re not worth the risk to my people and something about petards.

Stay safe, people. And keep everybody else safe, too.

No spammers today.

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¹ That patient was pronounced in the ED, but at least we had a bed to put him on and there was staff sufficient to work the code. That was August. If you have a heart attack this weekend when I’ve got my 24 hour shift, I can’t guarantee you’ll get a bed or a full staff because both of those are in short supply these days.

But this? This is fine. Get all your official KC Green This Is Fine merch at http://famous.dog.

Spam of the day¹:

Easily and safely clean your ears with Rotating ear cleaner

Oh hell no. I did my time in the power generation/rotating machines lab in college, and the first rule of rotating machines is you keep your body parts away from them².

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¹ Don’t think I didn’t try to get this up into the title. Oh, how I tried.

² The first rule of power generation is one of your hands is in a back pocket at all times. This is so if you bridge a high potential, the current will travel down your arm, along the side of your body, and out your feet. You’ll get gnarly burns along the path, maybe cook an organ or two, and have some nasty wounds at the entrance/exit points, possibly blowing some extremities off. Maybe just a finger/toe or two, but possibly an entire hand/foot.

But the alternative is if both hands are in play, that electrical current will almost certainly want to travel up one arm, through the chest, and down the other in search of its beloved Ground, and along the way it will play merry havoc with the electrically-controlled organ known as your heart.

Or, as Dr Acker shared by way of motivation back in the late 80s: If you allow a current of 100 mA to travel through your chest and heart, it will stop and you will lose consciousness and die almost immediately. If you allow a current of 400 mA to travel across through³ your chest and heart, it will put you into very nasty arrhythmias and you will die painfully in a full panic.

This was before automated external defibrillators, one of which would probably bring you back even from the 400 mA zap. I mean yeah, electrical burns and physical trauma to the heart, but you’d likely avoid the whole dead thing. Note to self: call up alma mater, make sure they require CPR/AED training as a requirement to enter the power gen lab. If not, yell at them.

³ This was edited after publication because I made a rookie mistake that shamed me when I noticed it was published to the wide world. Potential (or voltage, if you’re nasty) is across, current is through. Words have meanings.

It’s December! How in the crap-hell did that happen?

Anyways, you can celebrate the incipient end of this dumpster fire of a year¹ with any of the following sources of delight and joy.

• There have been magnetic comic sets before, but how many of them have involved little tiny magnets reading Balrog, Klingon or Fudgies? I submit: None.

  None, that is, until Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett decided to get into the game. Behold: the Sheldon magnetic make a comic set, which is up for preorder and if the stars align will make it to your US address in time for Yule. Everybody else, invent a holiday in January.

  I just have one question, LArDK: can I make a comic that refers to Fatty Chunklins? If not, I think you owe us an explanation.

• You must needs acquire every one! John Allison has launched the Advent season with a series of collectible stamps which may be redeemed for fabulous merchandise.

  I think perhaps kids these may not ever have experienced the thrill of getting S&H Green Stamps, and carefully counting how many were pasted on each page of your collection book, wondering where you could get just eleven more so you could could get that fabulous rolling typewriter table. Uh, not that I’m old enough to have done that².

  Anyway, now you can get in on the stamp-collection and redemption fun:

  You’ll be able to trade in your stamps at branches of Rumbelows, Woolworths and Woolco across the United Kingdom (excepting the Channel Islands).

  BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

  • Green stamps have a multiplier of 1.1x when redeemed at weekends.
  • Collect ten red stamps to enjoy a secret multiplier bonus at participating shops. If in doubt, ask the manager.
  • Rumbelows Hi-Fi Club members get a 50 point bonus on production of your membership pennant.

• Last but not least, Happy Twentieth Strippaversary to Little Gamers. It’s an infinitely weirder world than when LG premiered in the far-flung past of THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND, and anybody that keeps a comic going for most of 15 years, gets sporadic, then comes back? Props.

Spam of the day:

Tact Machete Knife – Full Tang Blade 60% off

Is a tact machete what you use to cut through your prose and make it blunter and ruder? I think we could use with fewer of those, actually.

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¹ As I was typing that sentence, I heard Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered refer to, and I quote, a godawful year.

² I totally did and that typewriter got me through college. Word processors weren’t always a thing, kids these days.